Islamic Militants Abduct At Least 100 Girls From Nigerian School

Armed men believed to be Islamic extremists abducted at least 100 girls from a school in northeast Nigeria on April 15. ‘Many’ of the teenage students were able to flee from an open truck, officials said, but dozens more could be facing horrific lives as sex slaves.

So scary. One day after a bombing killed more than 70 people in the capital city of Abuja, Nigeria, suspected Islamist rebels broke into a local school before dawn on April 15 and kidnapped at least 100 female students, ages 16 to 18.

The gunmen, believed to be members of the Boko Haram Islamist group that has attacked schools in the area in the past, killed a soldier and a police officer who were guarding the school, and then left with at least 100 girls, a State Security Service official said. The girls were taken after midnight from a government secondary school in the town of Chibok, located on the outskirts of an insurgent refuge, according to Borno state police commissioner Tanko Lawan.

Witnesses said the gunmen may have managed to kidnap as many as 200 girls, the New York Postreports.

Audu Musa, a teacher from another school nearby, said he saw eight bodies in the area. “Things are very bad here and everybody is sad,” he said, according to the UK’s Telegraph.

Fortunately, “many” of the girls managed to escape through the back of an open truck that they had been forced into, and return to Chibok, a local government official said.

Islamist Militant Group Boko Haram Is Believed To Be Behind The Kidnappings

All schools in Borno state were closed down in March, after Islamists killed dozens of students at a boarding school in Yobe state in February, Reuters reports. But the students had been called back to the school in Chibok to take their final exams, the official said.

Boko Haram, which essentially means “Western education is sinful,” is believed to be behind the kidnappings, as well as the deaths of more than 1,500 people this year. The group has targeted schools, as well as Christian churches and police and government offices, and it is also believed to be responsible for an April 14 explosion that killed more than 70 people at a bus station in Abuja.